Friday, 3 February 2012

Nocturnal Girlish Giggles 'n' Clanking Chains at Naworth Castle

I am most grateful for the kind invitation to make a guest
post on a blog I've followed since I first discovered how to 'follow'.

I'm
Helen Devries, otherwise found hiding behind the soubriquet of the Fly in the Web on my own and other people's blogs, long time resident of
rural
France and now settling in to Costa Rica, but in this post I would like
to recount my mother's wartime memories of the Borders...centred on
Naworth Castle, Brampton, Gilsland and Lanercost Priory.

Mother,
like many other women, was emancipated by the war, as had been a
generation of women in the previous one. She found the bounds of Army
discipline far more bearable than the constraints of female upbringing
and still speaks of her time serving with the ATS with pleasure.

Early
to join up she spent the first part of the war in Winchester...being
wowed by David Niven who was, I think, serving with the
Greenjackets...learning how to shoot -'take one with you' being the
motto of the time when invasion was feared to be imminent - and being
instructed how to blow up a German tank with a Molotov cocktail,
instruction of whose value she was and still is
sceptical.

Later in the war she served in
London, making radios for the French and Dutch resistance, both in
Europe and in their overseas colonies, working in a glass roofed
building while doodlebugs fell nearby, targeting the railway lines to
the North.

However, it was in the North that she
spent the middle part of the war years, at Naworth Castle and what
follows are her reminiscences.

She
was directed to Naworth, which was to serve as an army logistical
training centre, and her party arrived in the dark, seeing nothing but a
looming structure, dark against the night sky.

They were
billeted in two rooms in one of the towers...one room above the other,
and settled down amidst much giggling about haunted castles and clanking
chains. The temptation was too much....all through the night she and
her friends were kept awake by sounds of whistling,
moaning and clanking from the room above and her room berated their
colleagues over breakfast...only to be told

'We thought it was you!'

They
were promptly rehoused in huts in the castle grounds, where the only
hazards were cows clustered close to the huts for warmth and stray cats
giving birth to kittens in the beds.

The blackout being in
force, there was a problem every night with a light showing high up in
the old tower...though no one could find access to the aperture involved
and she also remembers one room that dogs would not enter.

She
remembers too seeing a portrait of Belted Will Howard, and visiting the
chapel in the top of one of the towers where this recusant nobleman
maintained a Catholic chapel in the Elizabethan period, together with a
priest hole. She was told too that there was a tunnel from the castle to
Lanercost Priory.

She explored the area when free....and
still
remembers taking a lift from a local gamekeeper, only to find the van
full of crows which he was supplying to a local pub to eke out the meat
in time of rationing!

The Howard family were strong on
temperance, buying out licences and setting up temperance hotels, but
the Army being the Army, pubs, proper pubs, were to be found! She
remembers one where the cellar was down a long flight of stone steps and
every time beer was ordered the elderly landlady would stump down to
fetch the beer in a jug.

She remembers two in particular...I
think in Brampton, but I am not sure...the Ring of Bells and the Coach
and Horses. In one of these the landlord had a parrot which could
imitate the sound of the brakes of the Carlisle bus pulling up outside,
and, being a parrot, it had a good sense of timing. Some minutes before
the bus was due to arrive...not too many which might have aroused
suspicion....it would perform its party piece and men would be
gulping down beer and rushing for the door...only to return a few
minutes later, cursing the bird!

She visited
Lanercost Priory...by road rather than by tunnel....and fell in love
with Gilsland, the old spa town...but one of her walks closer to home
led to a strange experience.

She and a friend
were walking alongside a stream, where there were a lot of cherry trees
in flower. It was warm and sunny, a lovely afternoon. She began to feel
oppressed and then frightened...she could no longer hear the stream
running, she found breathing difficult. She looked at her friend who was
clearly in the same state and they turned and ran back to the castle.

The
cook, a local woman, gave them a cup of tea and told them that the area
where they had been walking was known to be haunted...some sort of
massacre connected with the '45.

Mother is not and was not psychic...but she can still, at
96, remember the sense of terror she felt under those beautiful cherry blossoms.

She tried to visit Naworth twice after the war...once in the fifties and once in the eighties....but with no success.

15 comments:

I really do wish to extend my thanks to Helen aka Fly in the Web for this wonderful post. It's something we've talking about for a while...so it's great to see her mum's story here. I'm hoping to write some more about Naworth Castle. So please do watch this space! H :-)

As for David Niven, she remembers him receiving a package in the mess from a well known Hollywood female star...(whose name she forgets!)To the hoots of his friends it turned out to be a hand knitted willy warmer!She loved Naworth, the area and the people...so it was a shame she could not visit it again.

Perpetua, I've been allowed to reply on this blog...yes, there are odd things.My father told me of when he was a young man taking a cart load of copper ore through Glasgow on a moonlit night he came to a bridge known as the White Brig and the horse refused to proceed. No coaxing would budge it.He said there was as superstition that if you looked between the horse's ears you would see what the horse saw, so I asked him if he did and he said that he had...and he saw Death. Not a skeleton in black with a scythe...just the presence of Death.And he wasn't psychic either.

Hadriana...a lovely invitation! I'm hoping mother will be fit enough to come out to see us, so there's a chance that I could take you up on your invitation when I come over to get her organised for the trip. She would be delighted as she has such happy memories of the area...it was where she met my father.

What a wonderful idea this is, sharing blog space! What wonderful memories are being shared and after all, I suppose that is what blogging is all about. Our ancestors called it Journaling...thanks for sharing and allowing the sharingSandi (from Holding Patterns and One Cat Shy of Crazy)

Many thanks Fly. Great to have you here posting and commenting and visiting as well (with luck)! Hxx

Hello Sandi. Hope you are well. Glad to have you here. Thank you so much for your lovely comment. One of these days my fairy godmother is going to wave her wand to give me lots more time so I can visit everyone's blogs again. ;-) Hxx

P.S.: It will be a pleasure to show Fly and family around...that invitation is extended to bloggers and non-bloggers as well. This is a fantastically rich region - both in landscape and history and very friendly people....

Hi lovely to meet you too 'About Last Weekend' ! Many thanks for leaving a comment. With a bit of luck I can tempt Fly and her mum (and family) to come and stay here. We very much look forward to taking them back to the site. :-) HadrianaPS - Be nice if I can tempt you back to this blog too! ;-)

Welcome!

I, Hadriana aka Catherine Jarvis, am a North Eastern Lass. I studied and worked in London for 15 years. Followed by a Stint as a Part Time Red Sea Scuba Diver where I met my husband amongst the corals, sea grass and sea horses. Here we are (plus two children and an Egyptian dog) in the Heart of Hadrian's Wall Country, UK. Follow us as we realise our Roman Wall dreams!
Come and look at my other website Catherine's Hands-On-Latin Courses (Tours, Latin, Languages & History)...for more info see: www.hands-on-latin.com
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"If you are interested in sightseeing and exploring the surrounding region, I suspect that you cannot do better than the Four Wynds. The owners are extremely well informed about the area, and are generous and helpful with their knowledge. We were interested in the Roman history of the wall and surrounds, but I think that they would be equally great, whatever your interests. Add to this the fact that the food was amazing. While on paper the menu was the same as any other, the understanding of ingredients and preparation was exceptional." A Californian Guest. www.tripadvisor.com

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What did the Romans ever do for Us Britons? (Click here to find out! - Superb Website!)I am qualified to guide (Yellow Badge Tourist Guide) at Vindolanda & The Roman Army Museum (Website: http://www.vindolanda.com/Online Vindolanda Tablets: http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/)I'm also guiding at Housesteads Roman Fort too. Just down the road from here...I'm very proud to be on The Primary Latin Committee set up to promote the teaching of Latin in State SchoolsI'm very proud to support Epic Epiacum which has been set up to improve and promote access to the fort and the landscape surrounding the fort/farm - "Northern Roman Britain's best kept secret" (a quote by Stewart Ainsworth from "The Time Team")